Originally Posted by DreadWing

Fact. I spent fifteen years in 135/91k/91 and hated every minute of it. My QOL has gone up several orders-of-magnitude since I made the decision to come here; that's an objective claim I can make with conviction for just about every comparable dimension of QOL between airline/everything else. All except in the domain of hotel points. That's been something of a sacrifice...along with a rather huge cut in pay (wasn't worth it, anyway).



Not only that...pay is completely ARBITRARY outside of fractionals. Same goes for "work rules" (if any exist).



People get off on a lot of bizarre forms of masochism. Try and imagine a permanent reserve schedule. Being shipped around the country with bought airline tickets AS A PASSENGER isn't quite as "glamorous" as it sounds, especially when half of the airports your aircraft are sitting at require finding and driving a rental car. I've never had anything approaching that kind of fatigue whilst working here.

The ones that REALLY "love it" (i.e. "I'd NEVER go to an airline!") in 135/91 almost ALWAYS have something wrong with them (i.e. failed checkrides, violations, criminal convictions, etc). The rest of us were simply trying to survive, go home and do the girlfriend/wife thing, and try to get calls from legacy/LLCs.

Fractionals are the closest thing to the airlines (union protections, work rules, DEFINED "days off," training standards, yearly pay increases that will NEVER gain parity with major airlines), but you WILL work 20X more/harder, and under FAR worse conditions.